War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [709]
The musketeer regiment, which on leaving Tarutino had numbered three thousand, now, numbering nine hundred men, was one of the first to come to the place appointed for the night camp, in a village by the high road. The quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the cottages were taken up by sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and staff. There was only one cottage for the regimental commander.
The regimental commander rode up to his cottage. The regiment went through the village and stacked muskets by the last cottage on the road.
Like a huge, many-limbed animal, the regiment began the work of arranging its den and food. One part of the soldiers wandered off, through knee-deep snow, into a birch woods to the right of the village, and at once the chopping of axes and swords, the crack of breaking branches, and merry voices were heard from the woods; another part pottered around the center of the regimental carts and horses, bunched together, taking out pots, biscuits, and feeding the horses; a third part scattered through the village, arranging lodgings for the staff, carrying away the dead bodies of the French that lay in the cottages, and collecting boards, dry wood, and straw from the roofs for campfires, and wattle fences for shelter.
Behind the cottages, at the edge of the village, some fifteen soldiers, with merry shouts, were loosening the high wattle side of a shed from which the roof had already been removed.
“Ready now, all at once, heave!” cried the voices, and in the darkness of the night, a huge, snow-dusted section of the wall swayed with a frosty creaking. The lower stakes cracked more and more, and the wall finally fell over together with the soldiers pushing on it. There were loud, coarsely joyful shouts and guffaws.
“Take it by twos! Reach me that leever here! That’s it. Where are you shoving?”
“Now, all at once…Wait up, lads!…At the shout!”
They all fell silent, and a soft, velvety, pleasant voice began singing a song. At the end of the third verse, just as the last sound ended, twenty voices shouted out together: “Hooo! Here goes! All at once! Up with it, boys!…” But despite their concerted efforts, the wall hardly budged, and in the ensuing silence heavy panting could be heard.
“Hey, you, sixth company! Damn you devils! Give us a hand…we’ll also do for you.”
Some twenty men of the sixth company, who were on their way to the village, joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, about thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, curving, crushing and cutting the shoulders of the panting men, moved on down the village street.
“Keep on, will you…Look out, it’s falling…What did you stop for? That’s it…”
The merry, outrageous cursing never ceased.
“What’s with you?” suddenly came the commanding voice of a soldier who ran into the carriers. “There’s gentry here; the gener’l himself’s in the cottage, and you damned foul-mouthed devils…I’ll give it to you!” cried the sergeant major, and he swung and struck the first soldier who came along on the back. “Can’t you do it quietly?”
The soldiers fell silent. The soldier struck by the sergeant major, groaning, began to wipe the blood from his face, which he had scratched as he bumped against the wall.
“See how the devil fights! My mug’s all bloody,” he said in a timid whisper, when the sergeant major had walked on.
“Don’t you love it?” said a laughing voice; and, holding down the sounds of their voices, the soldiers went on. Once outside the village, they again began to talk just as loudly, interspersing their talk with the same pointless curses.
In the cottage that the soldiers had passed, the high command had gathered and a lively conversation was going on over tea about the past day and the proposed maneuvers to come. It was proposed to make a flanking march to the left, to cut off the viceroy and capture him.
When the soldiers came lugging the wattle wall, the cook fires were already kindled in various places. The firewood crackled, the snow melted, and the black shadows of soldiers darted here and there on